


Daughters

by wargoddess



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 16:08:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1121864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wargoddess/pseuds/wargoddess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Flemeth teaches Morrigan a lesson.  Morrigan's a quick study.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daughters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sorrowfulcheese](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sorrowfulcheese/gifts).



They travel in animal form, because the intrusion of humans upon a dragon’s domain is a challenge which must be answered with either battle or the humans’ submission as servants.  Flemeth serves no one.

She goes as a hawk, which allows her to alight frequently and observe her daughter.  Morrigan goes as a dog, at first — which is new, and interesting.  It means the girl has been spending enough time near human settlements to get a feel for the nature of a dog.  As they approach the lair, however, Morrigan changes herself into a giant spider.  It’s wise, since dragons will rarely attack such creatures, but also a warning, since spiders of that size will readily capture hawks as a snack. 

_Don’t like me watching you, hmm?_   The thought comes unbidden, though Flemeth is not surprised to think it, or to feel warmth as she does. _My good girl._

Soon.

When they reach the lair and wend their way through its sulfurous bogs and tunnels, past the nests of ravenous dragonlings — they kill a few, since that’s only to be expected; otherwise, what would the survivors have to eat? — they come at last to the mountain’s arid summit, and settle in.  Morrigan resumes her human shape and whispers the spell of concealment for both of them, though Flemeth remains a hawk, large enough to rip her lovely eyes out.   _You see, little one?  There’s more than one way to deliver a threat._

Morrigan’s mouth quirks; message received.  And then they have other matters to concern them.

For there, in a cradle of stone and steam, a dragon lies slumbering.  She is slim and lithe for one of her kind, and inordinately large — but that means nothing.  Size and brute strength are tenuous things to rely upon.  It is the wings — newly-grown and fragile, graceful arcs rising from her armor-clad shoulders — which mark the fullness of her power.

For above her, awake and with eyes gleaming as she gazes upon her daughter, is the lair’s queen:  a high dragon.  She is twice the younger dragon’s size and scarred from many battles, but there is tension in her alertness, in the way she grumbles now and again and treads the rocky ground with her massive claws.

The younger dragon stirs at last, yawning, stretching out her lovely wings.  She too is a survivor — most vicious of the dragonlings, most clever of the adolescents, most enticing to the young drakes who guarded her few vulnerable moments as she fed and prepared for metamorphosis.  She’s ready to breed now, if she so chooses.  But a dragon’s lair can have only one queen.

Flemeth watches Morrigan intently as the younger dragon rises and turns her yellow-eyed gaze upward.  This is, ostensibly, an observatory mission for future shapeshifting:  if Morrigan is ever to claim a dragon’s shape, she must see them, understand them.  But it is also another unstated message.  Will the younger queen fight the elder, and almost surely lose?  The high dragon loses too in that case:  years of protection and what nurturing dragons provide, wasted.  An investment in her own legacy, lost. But if the younger queen merely flees, will she have the strength to survive on her own?  If her steel is never tempered, she will grow no stronger.

Morrigan is silent, her face revealing nothing.

The younger dragon hisses softly, drawing Flemeth’s attention back to the mountaintop arena.  They are squaring off, she notes dispassionately; so the younger one has chosen the path of stupidity.  The high dragon growls a little, shifting her massive shoulders to ready herself for battle; she sounds resigned to Flemeth’s jaded ears.

But suddenly, all around the crags of the mountaintop, Flemeth hears other hisses in echo of the younger female’s.  _Ah, so that’s how it will be,_ Flemeth thinks, surprised:  not a hopeless frontal attack, but a sideways feint.  From behind rocks and wriggling out of narrow passages comes a double handful of well-grown drakes and — ah!  Another young female, larger than the drakes but as-yet unwinged.  Aware, however, that she has a greater chance of surviving to adulthood if she chooses her allies well, than if she fights alone. 

The challenger rears up on her haunches, beating her wings for balance, and shrieks at her mother; _behold_.  Between them all, they are enough to give the lair’s queen a run for her money.

It is sentimentality that makes Flemeth think the high dragon looks pleased.

But that is that, and the contest has ended — not with bloodshed but with both parties getting what they want nevertheless.  The younger dragon, having declared her independence, now keeps her guard up and spines a-bristle as she backs up; her allies slink along with her.  The high dragon has not moved from her crouch, but she’s not growling anymore.  The younglings will leave and doubtless start a new lair somewhere.  The queen herself will slumber, and perhaps when she wakes it will be time to mate again.  Or perhaps some new one of her daughters will have matured by then, to fight her way free or to die as fate demands.  Thus does the cycle continue.

Morrigan is silent as they camp that night, far from the dragons’ lair and on the edge of the wilds.  She is often silent, as is Flemeth herself; frankly there’s not much to say between them on most days.  Still, she’s surprised when suddenly, after dishing out the stew, Morrigan looks at her squarely.  “You can be sure,” she says, “that if I ever send my allies to fight you, they will not _sneak_ to do it.”

Well, now.  Flemeth smiles.  “You will if you must.”

Morrigan shrugs.  “If I must — if they are too weak to kill you outright — then I’ll choose stronger allies.”  She pauses.  “'Tis only respectful, after all.”

Flemeth blinks in surprise.  Morrigan scowls, having been caught in a compliment, and hunches over her stew.

But later in the night, when even the insects have quieted and the moon has set and Flemeth sits awake as always, relaxing and letting her true self stretch across the shadows of the world —

— she puts a gentle hand on Morrigan’s hair, where the girl lies sleeping beside her.  “You’re welcome,” she breathes.  This one, she feels certain, will be an investment well-settled.

Very soon now.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a random bit I wrote for katschy/sorrowfulcheese, on Tumblr.


End file.
